


Slaying In Seattle: A Family Legacy

by Ressick



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-14 23:08:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10545910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ressick/pseuds/Ressick
Summary: Old fic, dragged over from LJ.  Arizona is Tara's cousin.  This was meant to be just the first "episode" but it is really the only episode.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _Warnings_ : mentions of spousal/child abuse in the past  
>  _Grey’s Timeline_ : Season 1-8 happened as we know it.  Season 9 is somewhat altered after the first few episodes.  The lawsuit was directed at the plane manufacturer and charter companies, and they did still get their $15 million but from those sources; no hospital buyout was necessary.  
>  _Buffy Timeline_ : Assume an alternate version of season 6 occurred.  Season 7’s main events happened, except with some obvious changes coming from the no stray bullets thing & some other things that will become apparent.  Nothing from the comics.  Contains spoilers for all 7 seasons but really is only canon up through early season 6.  Sunnydale became a sinkhole 10 years ago.  
>  _A/N1_ :  I have no idea where this really came from.  Errr… sorry?  I once wrote a Buffy/Iron Chef crossover that was meant to be crack.  This is supposed to be serious.  I’m not sure how that happened.

June 2013  
  
A blond woman in olive green cargo pants, white blouse, and a black leather jacket strolled into Seattle Grace Mercy West with a sense of purpose.  Polite purpose.  Following signs and the general flow of traffic, she made her way to the pediatric surgery department, pausing briefly as she stepped through the double doors, nodding to herself.  She glanced around – watching the bustle of doctors, nurses, staff, patients, and families.  Not seeing what she was looking for, she moved towards a woman in light blue scrubs and a lab coat who was filling out a chart at the nurses station.  
  
“Excuse me?  I’m looking for Doctor Robbins?” she said.  The intern before her started, and then simply pointed behind her.  She turned, and spotted her cousin coming towards the desk, head buried in a chart.  “Arizona Robbins!”  
  
Arizona Robbins looked up at the exasperated call of her name.  She stared at the woman in front of her, “Tara.”  
  
“Don’t ‘Tara’ me – you haven’t picked up the phone in a year.  I had to call your mother months ago to find out what’s going on, and you know how Aunt Barbara is.  This is the first time I’ve been able to get away from Cleveland, and all you can say is ‘Tara?’  And I’m your favorite cousin?” she scolded gently.  
  
“Well my favorite cousin title sure wouldn’t go to your brother!” Arizona shot back.  Tara shuddered involuntarily at the mention of Donnie.  “I’m sorry, Tara.  I should have called,” she said softly.  
  
“Yes, sweetie, you should have,” Tara replied, pulling Arizona into a firm hug.  As the two embraced, Arizona thought of the stuttering, insecure, perpetually shy girl her cousin had been when they last spent the summer together.  
  
_June 1998_  
  
_Arizona flopped on her bed, half-asleep.  Her second-to-last year of med school had finished the previous month, so she was instead working at a local coffee shop and volunteering at a local free clinic associated with her school.  The two together exhausted her – especially as her clinic hours tended to be at complete odds with her job.  She reminded herself that it would be good practice for her internship and residency years.  Half-asleep, she first assumed the knocking on her door was for next door, but soon realized it was her own that was being pounded on.  She crawled out of bed, and opened the door to find, “Tara,” she breathed.  “What the heck are you doing here?”_  
  
_“I-I’m s-sorry.  I h-had nowhere else to g-go.”  The other blonde was barely an inch shorter than Arizona, her long hair completely obscuring her face and her clothes dusty with travel._  
  
_“Get in here,” Arizona replied gently, stepping aside to let her younger cousin in.  The girl only had a large suitcase, a worn school knapsack, and a very battered leather satchel on her.  Taking the suitcase, she set it in the corner of her small student housing room.  It was a single studio space, with a bed, bureau, and desk set supplied by the school, and a tiny attached bath.  The shared kitchen was down the hall, and while Arizona had tried to make her room homey with a mix of cheap bookshelves, posters on the walls, and a beanbag chair, it was in reality cramped and drab._  
  
_Tara stood in the middle of the room, head bowed.  “I-I just need s-somewhere to s-stay until September.  When s-school s-starts.”_  
  
_Arizona moved closer, her stomach dropping.  In arm’s reach of her cousin, she pushed Tara’s hair behind her ear, displaying a black eye and cut cheek.  Heart pounding, she gathered up Tara in her arms as the girl dissolved into tears.  Guiding her to the bed, she pulled Tara down and let her cry herself to sleep.  Once Tara had cried herself out, she gently moved away and rearranged the girl on her bed, pulling off her shoes and tucking her under a blanket.  She grabbed the knapsack and satchel, moving them next to the suitcase.  Filling her hotpot, she flicked it on and waited for the water to boil.  Until her cousin awoke and could give her the whole story, she’d drink tea and maybe read a book that didn’t involve disease or surgery for once._  
  
_The story was just about what she’d expected.  Arizona’s Aunt Elaine had died the previous year and with her mother gone, Tara had no shield from the violence and anger of her father and brother.  After she’d graduated high school and collected several copies of her transcripts, she packed in the middle of the night, cleaned out the small cache of money her mother had saved, then grabbed a lift with a friendly trucker before connecting with a series of buses that brought her to Arizona at Stanford.  She could move into the dorms at UC-Sunnydale the first weekend in September, but until then she needed a place to stay.  Even if that meant a blow-up mattress on the floor of her cousin’s studio apartment._  
  
May 2013  
  
The two women’s hug lasted for awhile.  It had been years since they’d seen each other. There had been Tim’s funeral in 2005 and a brief visit while Arizona had been in Cleveland interviewing for a job in 2008, but it had been an overlong period of subsisting on irregular phone calls and the occasional email.  However, the hug was lasting long enough to attract attention.  Especially from Arizona’s wife, who had approached while the pair embraced.  Callie cleared her throat.  
  
Arizona pulled back from the embrace, bouncing slightly on her feet and smiling widely.  “Calliope!  I want you to meet my cousin, Tara Maclay!”  
  
Callie’s eyebrow raised to her hairline.  “It’s nice to meet you,” she said.  “You’re the teacher, right?”  
  
“Yes, I am.  I’m sure Arizona told you it was a year-round school?  This is the first time I’ve had the chance to vacation in quite awhile, otherwise I would have been here for your wedding,” Tara replied smoothly.  
  
“Overworked and underpaid, right?” Arizona said, tugging lightly on Tara’s jacket.  
  
Her cousin’s reply was an enigmatic smile.  “Overworked, for sure, but we are compensated nicely.  It’s a very exclusive school.  Willow and I are staying at the Archfield for the week.  I was hoping we could meet up?”  
  
“Of course!  We actually have tomorrow off, if you’d like to come over.  You can meet Sofia.”  Arizona smiled brightly.  “Give me a call or text tonight and we’ll set it up.  I’m off around four.”  
  
“Sure.  I’ll see you tomorrow,” Tara smiled.  “A pleasure to finally meet you, Callie,” she nodded at the other woman.  With that, she squeezed Arizona’s arm affectionately and headed out of the hospital.  
  
When Tara had gone past the double doors marking the boundary of the peds ward, Callie turned to her wife.  “That’s the weirdo that sent the candles, nasty potpourri, and incense as a wedding gift, huh?”  
  
Arizona cringed internally.  “She’s very… ummm... New Age.  She and her partner are Wiccans.”  
  
“So she’s all one with the moon and stuff?  Huh.  How on earth is she related to your by-the-book parents?”  
  
“Our mothers were sisters,” Arizona replied softly, caught up in the now-fading memories of her Aunt Elaine.  “And my mother might surprise you someday.”  
  
“Were?” Callie asked.  Arizona rarely spoke of her extended family, and she had never met any of them before.  
  
“Aunt Elaine died when Tara was in high school.  Once she graduated, she left home, stayed with me until she went off to college.  Full scholarship to UC-Sunnydale,” Arizona answered, proud of her cousin’s accomplishments.  
  
“Sunnydale?  Isn’t that the town that collapsed in on itself like ten years ago?  It’s a big crater today?”  
  
“Yeah.  She hadn’t graduated yet, she ended up finishing her undergrad at the LA campus.”  Arizona turned to her wife.  “Don’t worry, you can quiz her all you like tomorrow.  I think you two might get along well.”  
  
Callie raised an eyebrow, “And her partner?  Willow?  Who names their kid that?  Were her parents hippies?”  
  
Arizona laughed, “No, they’re fairly conservative and Jewish.  I think.  I’ve never met them.  Tara’s never met them, either.  They’re pretty absentee.”  
  
“How long have they been together?”  
  
“Tara and Willow?  Thirteen years, give or take a bit.”  
  
Callie tried to imagine a world where she’d been with her wife for thirteen years but had never met the Colonel and Barbara.  It was fairly difficult.  
  
“So tell me all about them, then.  I know you talk to Tara, but we’ve been together for like four years and she’s never made it to Seattle?  Where’s her school, again?  What does she teach?”  Callie leaned against the nurse’s station, waiting for her answers.  
  
Arizona laughed.  “Tara is a fairly private person, you can get to know her yourself.  But the basics?  It’s an exclusive, year-round all-girls prep school in Cleveland.  She teaches languages and history.”  She didn’t add that the languages her cousin taught were Latin, Sumerian, and Old Norse.  
  
“And Willow?”  
  
“She teaches computer classes, mostly.  A few science classes.  And does some of the administrative work, I think.  They’re very busy.”  
  
Callie pursed her lips.  She could tell there was a lot her wife was holding back.  She knew so little about Barbara’s family, contrasted with the generations of Robbins history the Colonel could dredge up at a moment’s notice, history he was glad to expound upon and share with his daughter-in-law and granddaughter.  As she thought of more non-invasive questions to ask her wife, her pager went off.  “911, to the pit.  Bye, honey,” she said, sneaking a quick kiss before jogging off towards the ER.  
  
Arizona sighed heavily.  It was going to be an interesting visit.  
  
X-X-X-X  
  
The 911 her wife had received ended up being an MVA with a load of broken bones, leaving Callie in the midst of a series of surgeries while Arizona was able to pick up Sofia from daycare on time and head home.  
  
Sofia was in a curious exploratory phase of eating solid food, so Arizona cut up the eggplant parmesan she’d made for dinner into tiny pieces, letting Sofia unhurriedly feed herself.  Once supper was finished and the dishes cleaned, with a plate for Callie set carefully aside, Arizona bathed Sofia and then set her daughter to playing with a set of blocks and grabbed her cell.  She made quick work of arranging lunch with her cousin, and then sighed once more.  
  
Arizona looked around the apartment, noticing the small crystals scattered on windowsills and bookshelves.  She’d passed it off to her wife as a fascination with geology.  That was completely true – she’d been an avid rock collector as a child, picking up quartz from the ground with a methodical precision that her mother and aunt had laughed at.  It was also a complete lie.  The protective spells she’d cast on the apartment were centered in those stones, all above Sofia’s reach and capable of being moved without disturbing the layers of protection they provided.  The “nasty potpourri” that Tara and Willow had sent as a wedding gift was actually an herbal mix used as part of a fairly obscure spell to protect a home and family from demonic activity and negative magic.  Her first day off alone with Sofia, she’d cast the spell, her daughter in the center of the living room and all the protections layering over the tiny girl.  Arizona and Callie – even Mark - were protected as well by default as members of the household, but most of it went into shielding Sofia from harm.  After years spent avoiding her family legacy, Arizona had been desperate to protect her daughter, especially after the car accident that had almost claimed both her fiancée and her child.  
  
Sofia was engrossed in her blocks - a happy, healthy two year old.  It couldn’t hurt.  Arizona slipped off to her bedroom, wheeling her chair expertly through the apartment and leaving the door wide open so she could still see her daughter on the floor.  Scrounging quickly, she came upon a small locked wooden chest at the bottom of her closet.  She brought the chest back out into the living room and settled it on the coffee table.  A quick murmur of Latin and the latch flipped open.  Inside was a large leather-bound book, a doll’s eye crystal, tarot deck, and various other mystical supplies she hadn’t touched since she’d cast the spell to protect her family – and it had been nearly ten years before that.  She supposed the truth had to come out at some point, at least to her wife and eventually to her daughter.  Arizona Robbins was not only an extremely talented pediatric surgeon, she was also a witch.  
  
X-X-X-X  
  
Anticipating her wife would still be in surgery for awhile, Arizona packed up the remnants of her childhood training in magic, and resealed the box, stashing it under an end table for the moment.  Grabbing a highlighter that she’d clipped to a book, she set it on the coffee table and concentrated, centering herself and reaching out with long-ignored senses.  
  
Just as the highlighter rose off the coffee table and was steadying itself about a foot in the air, Callie hurried into the apartment and saw the levitation in progress.  She screamed, which shocked a fascinated Sofia who had been quietly watching her momma float the highlighter.  Sofia started to cry.  The scream had disrupted Arizona’s concentration, but the sound of her daughter crying sent the highlighter shooting at the ceiling.  It bounced off the ceiling and onto Arizona’s head, making her swear as she started to wheel towards her daughter.  She mentally cursed that she’d taken off her prosthetic already for the day, but she’d been on her feet enough to need the break for her residual limb.  She leaned over, lifting Sofia into her arms and soothing her surprised child.  Looking over towards the door, she saw her wife standing stock still in the doorway, luckily with the door absentmindedly closed behind her.  
  
“Calliope,” she called out as she rocked their whimpering toddler.  “Calliope, come over here.”  
  
The sound of her name seemed to pull Callie out of whatever stupor had gripped her.  “I could have sworn I saw that highlighter _floating_ in the _air_ ,” she said, laughing nervously.  “I know today was a long shift, but I’ve done worse and with a hangover.”  
  
“Calliope, come sit down, please,” Arizona pleaded gently.  Sofia settled into her momma’s arms, absentmindedly sucking her thumb as she watched her parents.  “There’s a few things we need to talk about tonight.”  
  
“Like how I’m obviously losing my mind?  Sure.  Talk away, Arizona,” Callie said, dropping onto the couch.  She stared at the highlighter on the floor, then glanced at her serious wife.  
  
“I know you’re a scientist, Calliope.  But you’re also a person of faith.  Deep faith.  I need you to believe in me, and what I’m telling you, okay?”  
  
“Arizona?”  Callie stared at the blond, becoming nervous.  
  
“I know we haven’t really talked about my beliefs.  And that’s my fault.  My father is a Unitarian.  But my mother, and my late aunt, are or were Wiccans like my cousin and her partner.  But not Wiccans like you’d see at a New Age store or a pagan pride day.  More like… witches.  Who do magic,” Arizona started tentatively.  
  
“The ‘the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will,’ I know.  I did read a bit about it for a comparative religion class in undergrad.  I wrote my final paper on Crowley.  What does this have to do with whatever?  So your mom’s a Wiccan.  Do you want to take Sofia to a full moon ritual or something?  That’s fine, she can go to that and church with me.”  Callie focused on Arizona, confused by the conversation.  
  
Arizona cringed.  “Not exactly.  There are two kinds of witches out there.  The kind like Crowley, who do that kind of magic, coupled with some kind of religious belief.  It’s basically stylized prayer, though sometimes they accidentally tap into real power and things do happen as they want.  And then there is the kind of witch who can levitate highlighters and banish evil spirits and do defensive or offensive spells.”  
  
“Harry Potter is fiction, sweetie, no matter what the kids in peds think,” Callie replied slowly, as if her wife was a little drunk.  
  
Arizona shook her head, “Yes, I know that.  But magic _is_ real.  It’s something my cousin and her partner do regularly.  And it’s something I was taught to do as a child.  You thought you saw the highlighter floating in the air because it was.  I was levitating it with magic.”  
  
Callie stared.  Either she’d stepped into the Twilight Zone, she had been hit in the head recently, or Arizona actually was doing magic when she walked into their apartment.  
  
“Look, why don’t you eat your dinner?  I’ll put Sofia down for the night and you can think about what I said.  I just… I thought you should know before Tara and Willow come over tomorrow,” Arizona offered quietly, wheeling herself and their daughter into Sofia’s room, and Callie could hear their nighttime routine as she mechanically rose, reheated the plate her wife had made for her, and ate.  
  
As her wife wheeled herself out of Sofia’s room, Callie remarked, “You’re right.  We should get a house.”  Arizona stared at her.  Callie waved her hand.  “I’m processing.  But you were right.  We need more space.  Besides, you promised me ten kids and we can’t fit them in here.”  
  
Arizona grinned.  If Callie needed time, she’d have it.  At least until lunch tomorrow, when the entire subject was sure to come up again with her cousin and cousin-in-law.  “We can start looking as soon as you’re ready.”  It was the first time either of them had mentioned other children, too, since Sofia, and Arizona felt herself light up at the idea.  She loved her daughter, and wanted her to have the same kind of sibling bonds Arizona had had with her brother.  
  
Callie grabbed her laptop from the counter.  “How about now?” she settled onto the couch, and patted the cushion next to her.  Arizona levered herself out of her wheelchair and cuddled up to her wife.  “Okay.  So let’s make a list of what we want, and then we can look, alright?”  
  
Arizona nodded.  “How about a single-floor?”  She could do stairs now, but at home it was easier to rest her residual limb and that meant her chair at least some of the time.  
  
Callie beamed.  “Sure.”  
  
X-X-X-X  
  
Arizona watched her cousin fidget and look around the apartment as their lunch progressed.  Somehow Callie and Willow had ended up deep in discussion regarding Callie’s artificial cartilage research.  “Okay, talk.  You haven’t taken a real vacation since you graduated college.  And that was a business trip with three days of sight-seeing tacked on.  If you were travelling on your own, you’d be at the Comfort Inn instead of the Archfield.  Why are you here, Tara?”  
  
The two blondes studied each other.  Tara ducked her head, letting hair fall over her eyes.  “Since Sunnydale collapsed, it’s taken a lot of time for things to settle.  Various cities are starting to get large influxes of vamps and other demons.  Sub-communities are popping up, like in Los Angeles with the bars and stores that cater to them.  Seattle is getting its own ‘demon district’ right now.  And we want to have a sort of outpost here.  Our first wave was a Slayer who just finished med school.  She’s one of the interns at Seattle Grace.  She patrols a little, when she’s not exhausted, and keeps an eye out more than anything.  She’s been reporting higher levels of activity for the past nine months.”  
  
Arizona thought about the intern class.  “Brooks, right?  I get a vibe off her, but I’ve never felt anything bad, so I didn’t worry.  I figured she might be a witch.”  
  
Tara nodded.  “She’s living out of her van in the hospital parking lot, and patrols your neighborhood specifically.  I keep trying to get her to rent an apartment, but she says it isn’t worth it given how little she’d be there.  And she’s not fully trained.  She attended our Cleveland school for the last two years of high school but then she went off to college, and med school, and we’ve covered as much of her schooling as we could, so she feels like she owes us.  To be cheap, or something.”  
  
Arizona nodded, “She’s very independent.  She’s turning into a good doctor, even if she likes to stalk me with chairs. ”  She grinned.  “And that explains the bumps and bruises I’ve seen her with.  She mentioned karate classes, and I just shrugged it off.”  
  
“She wanted you to.  She’s the only one who knows you’re my cousin.  We kept that quiet, just to provide fewer targets for the bad guy of the week,” Tara explained.  
  
“Well, an outpost, huh?  I’m betting it’s not just going to be Brooks.  She simply doesn’t have the time to patrol.”  
  
Tara shook her head, “No, we were thinking more of buying a house, and rotating fully-trained Slayers as tenants.  There’s places to find jobs or there’s the university to attend.  Maybe even start up a magic shop here, have a built in worker pool.”  She grinned.  
  
Arizona laughed.  “Callie and I are talking about buying a house.  We should look in the same neighborhoods.  It would be nice to know the folks next door.  If we got one with an attached apartment, or a two-family, we could rent to Brooks, since she’s going to be here for a few years at least.”  
  
Smiling, Tara replied, “I would feel so much better if you had a Slayer nearby.”  
  
Arizona looked down into her lap, running a finger over the top of her prosthetic.  “So would I.  Regular things like cars and planes are scary enough.  I don’t want vampires in my backyard if I can help it.”  
  
Tara set her hand on Arizona’s, squeezing gently.  “Of course not.  But you’re a survivor.  And I’ll be here.  At least for a while.”  
  
Blue met blue as the cousins studied each other.  “For a while?”  
  
Tara ducked her head, letting long hair fall over her face, “At least a year or two.  Perhaps longer.  We might end up sort of running the Slayer house here, after we set it up.”  
  
Arizona tilted her head, scrutinizing her cousin.  Opening up with rarely-used senses, she noted the second lifeform in Tara’s abdomen.  “How far along are you?”  
  
“About three months.  I want her to have family nearby, and it’s too dangerous to stay in Cleveland with the Scoobies now.  There’s no Hellmouth here,” Tara let a smile take over her face.  Arizona grinned back at her, drawing her cousin into a deep hug.  
  
“Well then, you should see what we’ve decided on for house must-haves and I can show you the good neighborhoods – with the best schools,” Arizona commented, dragging over the laptop for them to share.  
  
X-X-X-X  
  
Arizona washed the last of the lunch dishes as Callie tidied the apartment.  The blond looked over at her wife, who was attempting to corral Sofia’s blocks.  Tara and Willow had immediately taken to Sofia, and the little girl to her new cousins, so their daughter was fast asleep after a rollicking playtime with the two women.  
  
“What do you think?” Arizona said quietly.  
  
Callie turned to her, “Think?  Well they’re very nice.  I like them.  Sofia does too.”  
  
Arizona smiled, “That too.  But… they’re moving here, to Seattle.  We’ll see them more often than once every few years.  They’ll be part of our lives.  I want them to be.  And we’ll be a part of theirs – magic and demons and all.”  
  
Callie looked down at the toys in her hands, “It seems surreal.  I mean, I don’t even know… their story, I guess.  They talked about people and events I don’t know a thing about.  And when they first came in the apartment – what was that look?”  
  
“Hmmm?”  
  
She sent a mild glare at her wife, who was trying to dissemble.  “The look Tara gave you, approving of something.”  
  
Arizona wiped her hands on a dishtowel, then moved to sit on the couch.  “They could feel the barrier,” she murmured, still unused to talking about this part of herself.  “After Sofia came home, after we got married, I did a spell.  It was the first one I’d consciously done in probably ten years.  It was for protection.  To protect _her_.”  
  
Callie settled across from her wife, studying the hesitant woman before her.  “What exactly was it?”  She wasn’t sure how much she believed in the magic her wife claimed to know, but she understood and shared the urge to protect their daughter.  
  
“Nothing too complex; Tara had sent me the ingredients and she knows how I… don’t really practice.  It’s based in the apartment, as our home, but Sofia carries the protection with her to a certain extent.  It’s meant to keep out vampires, demons, and magical attacks.”  Arizona wrung her hands, “I just… I couldn’t keep her safe.  She was so _tiny_.  I needed to do something, anything.  She’s my daughter, Calliope.  I had to do it.”  
  
Meshing her hand with her wife’s, Callie nodded, “You did whatever you could to protect her, Arizona.  You _always_ do whatever you can for her.”  She took a deep breath, “But what does it really mean that your cousin is moving here, to Seattle?”  
  
Arizona met Callie’s eyes, “That things will start getting weird.  And because we work at a hospital, it might come into Seattle Grace.  Be prepared for a rash of neck hemorrhages.”  
  
“And you want to bring more of that into our lives by living near a bunch of girls who are in the thick of it?” Callie said with disbelief.  
  
“It’s better to be there, with people who know how to handle it, than alone,” Arizona replied.  “I’d rather be in the middle of the chaos, surrounded by women who know what they’re doing, what they’re facing, than by ourselves.  This is something I can’t really protect you from, Calliope. I can tell you about it, I can warn you, I can do a few spells to protect our home, but in the end I’m not much of a witch.”  She shook her head, “I’ve seen what Slayers can do.  I’ve seen what Tara and Willow can do.  I want that protecting us, protecting our daughter, our kids we haven’t had yet.”  
  
“If Seattle isn’t safe, we can leave.  We have money, we’re well known in our fields, we can get out,” Callie argued.  
  
“Really, Calliope?  This is our home.  Our friends are here, well, most of them.  Didn’t Addison say she was moving back soon?  Do you want to leave them in the middle of this?  Ignorant and in danger?  And where would be safe?  Tara says most of the major cities are getting these demon districts.  All that hellmouth energy that had been in Sunnydale is congregating in large population centers.”  
  
Callie rose and started to pace, “How is this even real, Arizona?  Magic and demons and slayers?  Don’t you think everyone would know about it?”  
  
“It’s been hidden on purpose.  Governments, the old Watchers Council, they work very hard to keep this out of the public eye.  And some people know.  You think Willow was anything other than an ignorant kid before she met Buffy?  She grew up on a hellmouth for god’s sake!  Tara and I grew up with magic, but we’re rarities.”  She shook her head angrily, “And Tara’s father was pathologically abusive about it – he told her that her magic was demonic.  She grew up hearing her father say she would turn into a _demon_ , that she was dangerous, evil.  Her mother and mine tried to contradict that, because it’s a _lie_ , but after Aunt Elaine died she had to listen to that day in and day out until she escaped with a black eye and only what she could carry.”  
  
Callie listened to her wife’s rant and stopped her pacing.  “A black eye?  Arizona?”  
  
“She doesn’t talk about it.  Don’t bring it up, ever.  But she showed up at my door at Stanford with a black eye and bruised ribs from her father and brother because her magic was evil according to them.  More like they used it as an excuse to control her, and Aunt Elaine.”  With a deep breath she continued, “Mom kept telling them to leave, to get away, but you see battered women in the ER all the time, you know the challenge that is for them, especially if they are in a community supporting the abuser.  And the women in my family, my mom’s a rarity to have left.  Where the Maclays are from – my mom, my aunt – they make the girl children keep the name so everyone knows who’s got the ‘demon blood’ in them.  Dad ended up there by accident, lost while hiking in the nearby state park before he joined the Marines, and that’s how mom got out, got out and found other witches to contradict the lies she’d been told all her life.  But I know my family history, Callie, and it’s not pretty.  Tara and I are the only ones of our generation not trapped in the same cycle, the same small-minded hellhole as our grandmother.  And Tara probably never would have dared leave if she hadn’t had somewhere to go, someone to go _to_.”  
  
“Arizona,” Callie breathed, seeing the tears running down pale cheeks.  
  
“This is my life, Callie.  This is who I am.  I never should have hidden it from you, but how do you tell a doctor, a brilliant scientist that everything they know is just the tip of the iceberg?  That vampires run around in the dark biting people, that demons exist?  That magic is real?  I don’t even think about it, I don’t want to, but it’s real, and it’s in Seattle now, more than ever.”  She wiped her eyes roughly, “I became a doctor because I saw my aunt battered and bruised when I was ten.  Tara was three, and she had a handprint across her cheek.  I wanted to help them, but I’m not strong enough as a witch to do that kind of spell.  So I decided then and there to go to medical school.”  
  
Callie sat down next to her wife and drew the smaller woman into her arms.  “I don’t know anything about magic or demons, but I do know you’re an amazing doctor, Arizona.  And I am so proud and lucky to be your wife,” she murmured, rocking them together.  
  
“I love you, Calliope.  I love you so much.  You and Sofia are my world,” Arizona said quietly, sniffling.  
  
“And you’re mine.  Even if your world has all this… stuff in it that I’ve never even thought could be real,” Callie replied.  
  
X-X-X-X  
  
Tara ended the phone call, plugging her cell in to recharge.  Willow sat in bed next to her, laptop open on various real estate listings in and around Seattle.  “Anya has all the funding ready to go,” she said.  “As soon as we have somewhere we want to buy, call her and she’ll extend an offer.”  
  
“What about your cousin?” Willow replied, raising an eyebrow as she met her partner’s eyes.  
  
“What about Arizona?” Tara said, confused.  
  
“Does she want to live near us?”  
  
Tara shrugged, “Plan as if she does.  If she doesn’t, well, we’ll adapt.  I want… I want us to have family nearby.”  She gently pressed her hand over her stomach.  
  
Willow frowned slightly, knowing that of all their living biological relatives, Arizona was the only real option.  “We could stay in Cleveland, with the Scoobies, if she’s wigged out too much,” she offered.  
  
With a shake of her head, Tara took her wife’s hand in her own, “No.  I love the Scoobies, but Slayer Central isn’t the place for us to raise her.”  
  
“And Slayer West Coast will be?” Willow teased.  
  
Tara laughed softly, “Well, it’ll be smaller for one.  And we’ll have the Scoobies visiting all the time so she will know them.  But Willow,” she met green eyes steadily, “it’s important that she have family to grow up with.  The Scoobies are our age.  She needs family from her own generation, someone who’s going to grow up knowing about magic, and everything else.  She needs to have Sofia around, even if she’s the baby cousin like I was.  Having Arizona in my life… I wouldn’t be me if it wasn’t for her, and Tim, and Aunt Barbara.  I want our daughter to have that too.”  
  
Willow’s face expressed her confusion, “But baby, Arizona didn’t even tell her wife about magic until we came to visit.  Why would she tell Sofia unless she had to?”  
  
“Sofia is the daughter of a Maclay.  By blood or law or just from day to day life, it doesn’t matter.  I don’t think Arizona has realized it yet, though,” Tara said softly.  “The moment she saw Sofia as _hers_ , her daughter, her child, Sofia became a Maclay in the eyes of magic.  And that means she’ll have just as much aptitude as if Arizona gave birth to her.  She’ll have to be trained, at least a little.”  
  
Sucking in a breath, Willow muttered, “I don’t know if I want to be around when she figures that out.”  
  
Tara shook her head, “Me neither.”  She sighed, “Arizona has spent so many years denying this part of herself.  It’s going to be an adjustment.”  
  
“But we’ll be here to help,” said Willow, resolve-face firmly in place.  
  
“Yes, we will.  And she’ll need us.”


End file.
